FOLLOWING the postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections, Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia urged village officials to spend their extended terms on crafting projects that would have “lasting value.”
The governor made the pronouncement ahead of the League of Barangays in the Philippines-Cebu Chapter general assembly on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019, where she will present the Capitol’s guidelines on requests for funding assistance for barangays in the component towns and cities.
“I am more in support of that (postponement) since tomorrow, we are calling a barangay assembly and I will be outlining our rules as regards the request for financial assistance from our barangays to ensure that our funds, if spent, will have a lasting value and benefit a lot of people,” Garcia said on Monday, Dec. 9.
Some barangays that requested financial assistance from Capitol drew the ire of the governor after she discovered that several barangays intended to use the cash aid for the purchase of uniforms, tents, monobloc chairs, air conditioning units, rings, printers, closed-circuit television units, medals and trophies, among others.
An initial inventory revealed that in the last 10 months, around 6,000 monobloc chairs had been distributed to at least 1,000 barangays in the province.
Garcia said she will also present the requests of the barangays during the assembly.
“It’s good that their terms have been extended so that they can also focus on beneficial projects and not on requests in aid of their reelection,” Garcia said.
President Rodrigo Duterte signed on Dec. 3, 2019 the law postponing the 2020 barangay and SK elections.
Republic Act 11462 postpones the elections to Dec. 5, 2022. (RTF)